PavCo's casino story gets fishier
“BC Pavilion Corp. chairman David Podmore said Thursday that if the proposed casino and hotel complex at BC Place is rejected by Vancouver city council, the Crown corporation will be left without a way to pay for the new $563-million stadium roof and repairs.”
Global TV News, Feb 25, 2011
“Contrary to reports that the $563-million renovation of the stadium will be imperilled if the Paragon Gaming casino project – triple the size of the current casino now in the neighbourhood – doesn’t go ahead, CEO Warren Buckley said, “We’ll be fine. We are fully committed on all the materials so there would be no scaling back.”
The Globe and Mail, March 15, 2011
Two and a half weeks ago, PavCo Chairman David Podmore wrung his hands in public and said rejecting the casino puts the whole BC Place Stadium project at risk.
Yesterday, PavCo CEO Warren Buckley said his boss was feeding us a line.
Can we believe a word the BC Government and its henchmen over at PavCo say when it comes to the casino/stadium project? Apparently not.
Buckley’s statements are inconsistent with PavCo’s assertions about the importance of the casino to the stadium development plans. The BC Liberal government doesn’t need that casino. They could use some kind of development to pay a small part of the bill.
But that’s not the end of the story. Buckley’s comments raised some serious issues for taxpayers about the BC Place stadium costs and financing.
In October 2009, when Podmore revealed the $485 million ‘final’ cost of what is now a $563 million retractable roof, he spoke to the financing. According to The Vancouver Sun, Podmore claimed:
“The $485-million (sic) cost will be financed through a 40-year loan from the government to the BC Pavilion Corp., a.k.a. PavCo.
Podmore said the loan will be covered by shifting $42 million left from the Vancouver Convention Centre construction project to the BC Place Stadium upgrade and through the sale of development rights on the lands at the western edge of the stadium.”
Yesterday, Buckley told Frances Bula that Podmore’s assertions were not accurate.
According to Bula’s story, Buckley said "the $6-million a year that Paragon has offered to pay for a land lease was intended to cover only about $75-million of the total cost.” She then went on to detail the ‘real’ financing plan according to Buckley. Surprise, the over-budget BC Place Stadium is being financed almost entirely by the taxpayers:
“The reality is that much of the stadium’s renovation costs are coming from general tax dollars. Of the total, he said, $277-million was a straight capital grant from the province. Another $40-million also came from the province as compensation for maintenance that had been deferred many years on the stadium."
That will be news for deposed tourism minister Kevin Kreuger, who used his fingers in the house to count out the cost for his critic Spencer Chandra Herbert. Kreuger maintained that 70 years multiplied by $6 million equals $420 million, which means the payments ipso facto cover the cost of the development. Not so, Mr. Never-Read-the-Briefing-Book.
Bula wrote that of the $563 million cost, PavCo was only intending on repaying $150 million. And much of that will come from money the taxpayers fronted for the over-budget Convention Centre project and the sale of Bridge Film studios amongst other sources.
In other words, the government and its appointees have misrepresented all along about the BC Place costs and financing.
And to what end? By overstating the importance of the casino to the BC Place funding, PavCo was supporting an unnecessary casino project that benefits friends and donors to the BC Liberal Party.
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(2) Comments
This blog post is a misrepresentation of what's going on. As one of the reporter who's been covering this a lot, I feel compelled to say that PavCo officials have never switched their line, nor has Warren Buckley contradicted David Podmore.
Podmore told me two weeks ago that the casino lease money would only pay for half of the $150-million loan obtained from the province. Something that armchair observers should realize is that sometimes what seem like contradictions are just different reporters asking different questions and putting different interpretations on the answers.
Really, there are lots of difficult things to sort out here. Why make up conspiracies as well? Yes, it's true that if the casino proposal fails, the immediate financing isn't at risk. But when you think about it for, say, a minute, the lease money the casino would pay back over 70 years, not just the current $150-million loan but all the other tax dollars now committed.
Less than three weeks ago, Global reported that Podmore said if the Casino goes down, the corporation will be left without a way to pay for the new roof. In her piece on Thursday, Frances Bula wrote that contrary to reports that the project would "be imperilled" if the casino went down, Buckley told her the project was just fine under those circumstances.
Now she says my characterization of that as a whopper of a contradiction is a mischaracterization. I don't know. I'd say those two statements couldn't get more contradictory. You be the judge.
More to the point I believe my characterization of the way Pavco and the government have pulled the wool over the taxpayers' eyes when it comes to the dubious financing of this boondoggle is more in keeping with the historical record than Ms. Bula's.
Mr. Podmore may have shared the actual financing scheme with Ms. Bula, but he hasn't shared it with BC taxpayers. They've been told by Mr. Podmore, the Premier and the minister responsible that, in general terms, the roof and other repairs will be paid for by a shift of $42 million from the Convention Centre account and money from development rights.
Nowhere has the government or Mr. Podmore come close to saying what Mr. Buckley told Ms. Bula when he said "The reality is that much of the stadium’s renovation costs are coming from general tax dollars."
In fact here's what PavCo says about the financing on its own website: "The majority of this project is self-financed by PavCo." If Ms. Bula has quoted Mr. Buckley accurately that statement is clearly not true and she should not pretend it is.
Maybe that's why the government and PavCo have refused to release the business plan and specific financing details, citing cabinet confidences.